Posted on 04/29/2011 5:27:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Obesity is a national health crisis ... If current trends continue, it will soon surpass smoking in the U.S. as the biggest single factor in early death, reduced quality of life and added health care costs ... Obesity is responsible for more than 160,000 excess deaths a year ... The average obese person costs society more than $7,000 a year in lost productivity and added medical treatment." — Scientific American, January 2011.
Considering those troubling statistics, Advertising Age's headline this week is welcome news: "Weight Watchers Picks a New Target: Men." The story details how the nation's biggest diet company is using the NBA playoffs to launch its first male-focused advertising campaign. Sounds great -- except for one thing: Why only now?
This is a significant question in a country whose debilitating weight problem is more male than female -- and "more" means a heckuva lot more. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, almost 70 percent of men are overweight, compared with 52 percent of women. Yet, somehow, 90 percent of the commercial weight-loss industry's clients are female, and somehow, this industry hasn't seen males as a viable business. How can that be?
Market researchers typically explain the situation away in trite "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" platitudes, insisting that it's only "because men tend to want to lose weight on their own by working out in a health club or designing their own exercise program, and they are less likely to join groups or seek counseling," as one told Advertising Age. But such generalizations are, at best, truthy, and more likely, completely apocryphal. The real explanation for the gender disparity is found in a chauvinist culture whose double standards demand physical perfection from women while simultaneously celebrating male corpulence.
Though this double standard is rarely discussed, you can see it everywhere.
In comedy, fat guys from Chris Farley to Kevin James haven't been venerated in spite of their huskiness -- their humor has been seen as more valuable because of their size. Same thing in the drama genre: From John Goodman to James Gandolfini, male girth is seen as either innocuous or beneficial. But how many major comediennes or actresses get the same treatment? Very few.
Similarly, in big-time sports, our male superheroes are often super-fat. Harvard University, for instance, found that 55 percent of Major League Baseball players are overweight, while the University of North Carolina found that 56 percent of National Football League players are obese. These whales, of course, are interposed on TV between beer commercials featuring super-thin female models and are often playing in front of impossibly dimensioned female cheerleaders.
In politics, it may be the worst of all: Overweight icons like Rush Limbaugh, Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie regularly dominate the headlines as serious leaders, but no woman even vaguely approaching their body mass index would be taken seriously in a similar role. In fact, so powerful is this double standard that America barely flinched when the morbidly obese Limbaugh criticized the svelte Michelle Obama for "not project(ing) the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue."
In light of all this, Weight Watchers' move can be seen as a welcome, if belated, step toward addressing a deeper gender disparity in how we portray weight. It is a disparity at the heart of everything from male obesity epidemics to female eating disorders -- and it will end not when the fat lady sings, but when the fat guy finally loses his privilege.
He's a local talk show host in Denver, and he's not just liberal...he's loony far left.
If you’ve ever been to Europe, you know what people like the David Sirota and the authors of those studies expect us to look like.
I was in Berlin last year and I was absolutely shocked at how puny everyone was. And those were Germans, not Frenchmen. I felt like I could snap most of their arms off like twigs.
I think I’ll stay American. If that means I’ll cost a few thousand extra a year, I think I can handle it.
“the svelte Michelle Obama”
I can think of a lot of adjectives for Moochelle, but “svelte” is not one of them.
The average obese person costs society more than $7,000 a year in lost productivity and added medical treatment.”
Really? The nation has been becoming “obese” yet productivity reaches new record levels almost yearly.
Me smells an agenda...
“Overweight icons like Rush Limbaugh, Haley Barbour, Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie regularly dominate the headlines”
Odd, i never noticed that all democrat men of that age were so slim? Funny how they could have made this point with some fat democrat men,,, nominees please?
“The average obese person costs society more than $7,000 a year in lost productivity”
Yeah, but think of what they net for everyone else in Social Security. Just sayin’...maybe we should put a tax on any food that is NOT one of the following: broccoli, cauliflower, or yogurt, proportional to it’s unhealthiness (yes, I know that the camel’s nose is already in the tent on this one).
So, where does this type of cold calculation end?
Or how much productivity does the average liberal congresscritter cost society?
anyone have that photo of”svelte” Michelle Obama walking up the stair with the european first ladies??
Maybe “svelte” is Swahili for blimp.
Have they looked at the south side of our Secretary of State.
Just within the past few years, the govt lowered weight standards. So, for someone who’s 5’6” who weighs 130 lbs, five or six years ago they fit in the ‘average’ category; if the new standard is 120 lbs. that same person today is considered ‘obese.’ The person’s weight has’t changed, just the govt standards. Those changes had to increase the ‘obese’ population by at least 10%.
Just as a reminder,(I’ve read) Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. Today, no one can be a Hollywood star if she’s larger than a size 4.
Svelte compared to what? Jupiter?
I have been learning this one. Have been working out intensely nearly every day for a few months. I have not lost weight, but my clothes are falling off. Because they are getting too big, not just because I like to toss them off everywhere. ;)
The people cited in this hogwash all work. Every one of themis a productive taxpayer.
Why don’t we talk about all of the lazy bloodsuckers on welfare who do nothing but shop for free food at Walmart.
I always wonder where these guys actually get these statistics.
but on the other hand, fat people are the ultimate stimulus package- they generate alot of work for the healthcare industry and die young so as not to collect SS +
By this reasoning, I suppose we will have to crack down on gays with active sex lives, too, huh?
She didn’t let that pork chop platter get past her.
Still waiting on the article about how much the homosexual lifestyle is costing us.
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